The study, published by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), indicates that newspapers are downsizing, becoming younger and more tech-savvy, and are sharpening their focus on local issues. As a consequence, many are becoming “niche reads.”

The reason for these shifts is attributed to advertisers, which are “follow[ing] readers online.” Nevertheless, newspaper Web sites “capture only a small fraction of the revenue lost as they sell fewer print ads, which fetch more money,” according to the Associated Press.

As a result of job cuts, many reporters are now assigned to several different beats, resulting in fewer stories written by reporters considered authorities on a topic. The PEJ study also found that some papers have eliminated features entirely or relegated them to a smaller space on the page.

The study follows a report commissioned by the Associated Press that suggested that young news readers are suffering from “news fatigue,” attributed to a dearth of deep news coverage and an abundance of repetitive headlines.

The PEJ study also notes that editors “feel torn between the advantages the Web offers and the energy it consumes to produce material often of limited or even questionable value.”

Henry Weinstein of the Los Angeles Times commented in 2006 that newspapers must continue to provide in-depth and foreign coverage in order to “bear witness” to important events, but job cuts and a focus on local news are preventing this. One reader recently protested job cuts at his local paper by suing the paper.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism study surveyed editors at dailies around the country. According to 97 percent of editors surveyed, local news was "'very essential' to their product,” reported the Associated Press. And 56 percent of those editors said they believed their product to be better than it was three years ago because it was “more targeted.” The study also found that newsrooms are younger than they were three years ago, and reporters are more technology savvy.

Newspapers have had to learn how to embrace the Web rather than fight it, which in some cases is leading papers to differentiate between Web and print offerings. Gannett, which owns USA Today and several other papers, uses the Web to cover breaking stories, whereas its print newspapers are heavier on analysis, going more in-depth and focusing more on local issues.

A study commissioned by the Associated Press, which has led the organization to transform its approach to news writing, found that young news readers, who primarily use the Web for news, are “overloaded with facts and updates and had trouble connecting to more in-depth stories.” As a result, AP has developed a “1-2-3 filing” system that often pairs brief news stories with longer, more-in depth follow-ups.

Henry Weinstein, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, gave an award acceptance speech in 2006 that lamented the job cuts affecting the Times and many other papers, which have continued into 2008. Weinstein remarked that “[w]hat is at stake here is not simply a matter of job preservation. This is a matter of information development and preservation. To the extent that newspapers reduce their capacity to report on these events, we are creating a dangerous news vacuum. We are failing to bear witness.” Weinstein also criticized newspaper executives for wanting to reduce papers’ foreign news coverage.

Keith Hempstead, a lawyer from Durham, N.C., sued his local paper, the News & Observer, in June of this year to protest job cuts at the paper and to get the attention of the paper and the larger news industry. “I hate to see what companies that run newspapers are doing to the product,” Hempstead told reporters. “The idea that taking the most important product and reducing the amount of news and getting rid of staff to me seems pointless to how you should run a newspaper business.”

Newspapers represent a tradition that many people are not willing to relinquish. A 2006 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey found that only 4 in 10 Americans get their news from a printed newspaper, but author Anita Diamant, in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, writes that she is not part of the declining trend. “The daily paper is, after all, only one of many news delivery systems. And some of the new systems are way cool,” Diamant writes. “And yet I cling to my paper.”

The Project for Excellence in Journalism study is available in full on the organization’s Web site. It explores several aspects of the daily newspaper’s status today, including cutbacks, the influence of the Web, the role of the citizen in the newsroom and the changing content of news stories.